ARIEL Sharon, so the news reports say, has complicated America’s efforts to build an anti-Saddam war coalition by telling Washington that he would definitely retaliate militarily if Iraq attacks Israel.

Well, maybe he has and maybe he hasn’t. Or maybe the Israeli prime minister really has little choice in what could shape up as a no-win situation.

Sharon’s office heatedly denied a New York Times story Sunday that reported that the prime minister has privately informed top Bush administration officials that the issue “is not whether to respond but how to calibrate the response.”

But the notion that Sharon has promised swift retaliation would certainly be consistent with his long-held policy.

During the 1991 Gulf War, when Israel – under heated pressure from the first Bush administration – sat on its hands in the face of 39 Scud missile attacks from Saddam, Sharon was the lone Cabinet minister who loudly called such restraint a drastic mistake with dangerous long-term implications.

This time around, most Israelis agree with him: The most recent poll shows 70 percent favoring a military response to similar attacks.

But Washington wants no such retaliation – and is sending Sharon the message in unmistakable terms.

Even before the Times story, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld – perhaps the strongest U.S. Cabinet supporter of Sharon’s hawkishness – told Congress that, in case of war, “It would be in Israel’s overwhelming best interests not to get involved.”

By which, of course, he means that it would be in America’s best interests that Israel stay on the sidelines.

Or, as a Jerusalem Post cartoon put it some months back, “Before Sept. 11, the world told us we were an impediment to peace. Now they tell us we’re an impediment to war.”

But what of Israel’s interests?

Clearly, maintaining warm relations with Washington – especially with a U.S. administration that has been so openly supportive of Israeli policies – is paramount. Indeed, Sharon’s ability to do so has been paramount to his considerable political success.

But Israel faces long-term realities that extend beyond salvaging a coalition of Arab nations to oppose Saddam (a coalition, incidentally, that does not exist and that quickly disintegrated after the last Gulf conflict).

For one thing, Israeli civilians would bear the immediate brunt of any Iraqi attack – this time, perhaps, from Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. Yet only Israel, among all the world’s nations, is asked to surrender the basic right to self-defense.

And once Saddam is vanquished, Israel faces further threats. Not just Palestinian suicide bombers: Israeli officials see a regional threat from Iran, whose Hezbollah puppets already are trying to provoke a response – diverting attention from the Iraqi conflict – by siphoning water sources along Israel’s northern border.

The fear is that Israel’s active participation in any action against Iraq would provoke Arab anger and change an allied-Iraq conflict into an Arab-Israeli war.

But no such war erupted in 1981 when Israel staged a pre-emptive strike and destroyed Saddam’s nuclear reactor at Osirak.

Israel, recall, stood completely alone at the time: Even then-President Ronald Reagan condemned the attack (which, it turned out, yielded tremendous dividends when allied troops moved in a decade later).

Then there’s the long-term implications for Middle East peace inherent in the pro-restraint position.

These nations, after all, threaten to unilaterally withdraw from a U.S.-led effort to rid the region of its greatest threat – merely because they refuse to lend themselves to anything with which Israel is attached. How can Israel be expected to reach political settlements with such governments?

Whatever happened to President Bush’s ultimatum that “either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists”?

The fears over the results of Israeli self-defense were unfounded 10 years ago – when Kuwait was under Iraqi occupation and nations like Saudi Arabia feared for their very existence.

Yet Israel was forced to stand aside – with the deadly result that Arab nations learned a dangerous lesson: that Israel can be restrained by a heavy hand from abroad.

Israel’s need to respond is one of future deterrence against a threat to its security that will remain in the region long after Saddam Hussein has been ousted and his weapons arsenal destroyed.

Clearly, Israel wants to remain a loyal American ally; after all, who’s been fighting terrorism longer than the Israelis? But, like all nations, it must consider its own long-term best interests.